‘Mt. Trashmore’ Alerts Students To Recycling

Students who walked by the Science Center last Friday were greeted by a giant heap of trash.

Mt. Trashmore, an 8-foot tall mound built by Harvard’s Resource Efficiency Program volunteers (REPs), displayed one day’s worth of Yard trash as part of their ongoing efforts to boon recycling rates at Harvard.

“The purpose was to make a visible reminder to Harvard students staff and faculty that even though we are recycling which is good news, we are still generating a lot of trash,” said Robert Gogan, manager of recycling & waste services in Facilities Maintenance Operations who worked with REPs—a branch of the Harvard Office for Sustainability—to coordinate Mt. Trashmore.

The heap had a 12-foot pole, indicating what the height of the pile would be without recycling. There were also various signs surrounding the trash with recycling tidbits, such as the fact that a ton of trash costs Harvard $87 to remove, compared to $20 for a recycled ton.

REP volunteers were on site from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. to talk to people, and answer questions about recycling.

Passerbys were pleasantly surprised by how small the trash pile was, including University President Drew G. Faust, who commented to a volunteer that she thought it would be bigger.

REPs also conducted a virtual waste audit that mimicked the annual audit of Harvard’s trash that happened earlier that week.

In the waste audit, REPs went through a sample selection of Harvard’s trash, assessing its makeup and recovering recycled materials. The most “surprising” result, said Gogan, was that paper, which generates methane, a greenhouse gas that is 75 percent worse for the environment than C02, dropped to record low levels.

Gogan touted Harvard’s adoption of single-stream recycling this year, which enables people to indiscriminately recycle paper, plastic, cardboard, and bottles, as responsible for the increased recovery of paper.

In addition, the data from monthly waste-audits attests to rising recycling rates on campus—in October, a record-high 54 percent of total refuse was recycled.

REPs’ focus on recycling is a component of the Harvard Office for Sustainability’s ongoing efforts to engage people in thinking and acting on sustainability. Some of these include the Sustainability Pledge, which aims to garner over 8,000 signatures of people willing to personally commit to help Harvard reduce its GHG emissions, and the creation of Green Teams, which promote recycling, waste reduction, and sustainable measures at the graduate schools.

“We’ve worked hard with the REP program to promote social marketing and peer-to peer marketing,” Gogan said. “We’re trying to raise the recycling flag where we can and promote waste reduction and smart procurement.”

REPs will also be volunteering at the Harvard Yale game. Six 30-yard dumpsters of trash were generated at the 2006 game and Gogan said he hopes to reduce that number this year by making recycling easier and more visible.

“When you have a big population, especially one that may be somewhat impaired with respect to coordination and judgement, they are out to have a good time not to be lectured to” Gogan said. “But if you can recycling easy and fun and not out of your way...you can make it a simple thing [for people] to do.”

—Staff writer Natasha S. Whitney can be reached at nwhitney@fas.harvard.edu.